


This is not fair

by EvilDime



Series: Crossing Over [3]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Sherlock (TV), Star Wars - All Media Types, The Matrix (Movies)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Chosen One, Crossover, Drama, Gen, Prophecy, Rebirth, Self-Sacrifice, life is not fair
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-29
Updated: 2016-04-29
Packaged: 2018-06-05 07:59:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6696472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EvilDime/pseuds/EvilDime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being the Chosen One kinda sucks. Every time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This is not fair

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: None of the characters and settings of the fandoms involved are mine, and I make no money from writing this. Note that some parts of the respective stories are quoted verbatim, others have been paraphrased. I have not specifically marked either. Just assume that anything you recognize probably wasn't my idea.

* * *

 

"Oh no. No, no, no-no-no. It's not fair," Smith was saying.

Had he still been conscious, Neo would have agreed. It wasn't fair that after all he had done, all he had suffered, there had been no other way to bring peace to his world than to sacrifice himself. But here he was, laid out like the Saviour nailed to the cross, and very much dying this time. 

Maybe he would return to this world, to either of its realities, and maybe he wouldn't. But for now, he had performed his duty, and was heartily glad to be done.

* * *

She looked into the bright light below her. She did not want to jump. She really didn't. But somehow, she was sure that with a prophecy hanging over her head and the entire world in the balance, she didn't really have a choice.

A glance at her sister - who used to be a magical artefact but whom she somehow managed to love so deeply regardless that she could not bear to see her dead - made up her mind. There really was nothing else to do.

Cursing her lot in life, Buffy stepped over the edge.

When Willow pulled her back, she realized the truth of the words she had spoken to Dawn before she died: _The hardest thing in this world is to live in it._

* * *

"Does it hurt?" he could not help but ask.

"Dying? Not at all," said Sirius. "Quicker and easier than falling asleep."

Harry had the disturbing sense that Sirius wasn't being entirely truthful. He didn't know why, but there it was: He clearly remembered his own death, and it had been _very_ painful. He frowned. 

"You know, I have the oddest sense that I've been here before."

The Marauders and his mother blinked at him, turning around to face the doomed teenager where he had stopped. 

"Here in the forest, you mean?" Lupin tried to clarify. "I know you and your friends have roamed around Hogwarts quite a bit. Surely -"

"No, not this place," Harry cut him off, not even noticing that he was being rude. He was lost in his own head, chasing an elusive feeling and a vague memory of rain, cold, a bright light and an overwhelming pain exploding inside him like the fires of Armageddon. "This... situation," he elaborated. "Being prophesied to save the world. Fighting the good fight, giving everything I have and then some, and still being left no choice in the end but to sacrifice myself. It is... it's like I have been here before, you know? Like I have been down this road, and while I know this will turn out for the best, that all my friends will be safer for it, the world a slightly better place, I also know that I won't really be a part of that. Or if I am, I won't much enjoy it.  "

He glared unhappily at the leaf-covered ground while around him, the ghosts of his parents and friends traded lost looks. 

"You know...," his father hesitantly began, "these things have a tendency to work themselves out. Maybe all is not lost? Maybe this won't actually be the end, and you _will_ get to enjoy the results of your bravery."

"Sure," Harry said, humouring the ghost. He squared his shoulders and started walking towards his death once more. His companions were silent around him, and he was left to ponder whether he actually _wanted_ to survive this. The result was startling: He found he rather did not. If his sacrifice ended the war, they would still be left with the destruction Voldemort and his Death Eaters had wreaked on both the Magical and the Muggle World, and setting that mess to rights would _not_ be fun at all.  He had the very definite feeling that one sacrifice was _not_ enough to set everything to rights. There would still be things wrong with the world. There would still be work to be done. And he knew with a bone-deep certainty that returning after one's death was not enjoyable _at all_.

Harry was tired. He was tired of fighting other people's fights, cleaning up other people's messes, and being left merely going through the motions of a happy life.

He did not want this.

So when Dumbledore told him how much good he could do by going back, Harry was ready to scream.

Killing Voldemort was deeply satisfying. Harry held him responsible for all his pain, and it felt  _good_ to hurt him. To  _end_ him. 

Maybe he should never have been so squeamish about people getting killed.

* * *

It wasn't fair.

That was the predominant thought in Anakin's head as he sat and stewed while his only chance of saving Padmé's life was being erased by the self-righteous Jedi.

They said he was the Chosen One. The one to bring balance. They said he was oh so important.

He knew they were right, of course. There was no other Jedi as powerful as him. And he had always been the bloody Chosen One. Not that he knew where that knowledge came from, but he was fairly sure that he had been through all this before: a lonely childhood, a wise mentor, gaining fantastic powers, sustaining immense losses. Struggling, always struggling to do the right thing at high cost to himself and those near him. And in the end, he always had to sacrifice his own happiness for the Greater Good.

Every single time, he went willingly like a lamb to the slaughter.

But this time it wasn't his own head on the butcher's block. It was Padmé's. How could they force him to make that choice? How _dare_ they?? 

He was more powerful than Obi-Wan, having long surpassed his teacher. And still, the Council would not even recognize him as a master. They were denying him his right. Were they ever going to acknowledge him as an equal? He wasn't just an equal, even. He was more, he was better than any one of them. Why did he let them decide what was right and what wrong? Why should he stick to their stupid moral code? How dumb was a codex that disallowed  _love_ , anyway? 

Why did he have to choose between love and his life-long dream of being a Jedi?

It was not fair.

They had no right to make him choose.

It was time to stop listening to them.  It was time to stop being squeamish about other people's deaths  and to finally pursue his own happiness.

...Awaking after the surgery to see the mask descending on his face, Anakin was unsure if his choice had been a good one. He had chosen the Dark Side in order to protect a woman who was clearly now in love with someone else. And yet... he still loved her.

"Is she alright?" he asked. "Padmé? Is she alright?"

He found that it had not been worth it.

At all.

Years later, as he was watching his son slowly being killed in front of him, Darth Vader finally resigned himself to his fate. He was destined to sacrifice himself for the sake of others.  Putting it off by rebelling against his fate had not made him happy, and looking around at the dark Empire his master had built, he was fairly certain that it had not made anyone else happy, either.  When all was said and done, he was still left with the choice-that-wasn't-a-choice to sacrifice himself. 

So with great reluctance, he once again did.

* * *

Growing up loved, spoilt, fairly happy and with no magical powers at all, being part of a family that didn't suddenly die should not have felt creepy, but somehow it did. Having no evil relatives or other slave master to drive him ragged, he was at leisure to pursue the odd thoughts and feelings that came to him in quiet moments, and little by little, he put together the clues about his past. Luckily, he had been gifted with a magnificent brain this time; considering some of the choices he had made in the past, he found that he was due some intelligence as the previous couple of incarnations had obviously been lacking in that respect. 

Those pasts firmly in mind, he set about preventing a repeat.

At age twenty, he was reasonably sure that even if the world experienced a surprising Armageddon, he would not be the one picked to sacrifice himself, if only by virtue of his carefully cultivated reputation of abrasive cruelty. 

When disaster still had not struck by the time he turned thirty, Sherlock Holmes smiled to himself. This life would be different. He was sure of it.

  
  


_\- The End -_


End file.
